Realism-style tattoo on the upper arm of a flag blowing in the wind, with stars and red and blue shading behind the black script reading We the People of the United States.

We the People script over American flag on arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo shows a waving American flag with white stars on a blue field and red stripes, shaded to look like fabric. Black script reading "We the People" sits across the centre, with "of the United States" in smaller black lettering below. The ink is mostly red and blue with grey shading, and the design fills the frame against a black background.

Realism Lettering Upper arm American flag Star Script Text Flag

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's iced over. Sit by the range and I'll tell you about the sheet of paper that hung over Eli Dorrance's barn door, because it was never really a flag at all. Eli was a hired hand who could write a fair hand and could not hold a tune. When the schoolhouse wanted the opening words copied out for the Fourth, the teacher gave him the job, since his letters were the only ones that stood up straight.

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He sat three nights at the kitchen table with the lamp turned low and a pen he kept dipping until the nib split. Every capital cost him an hour. The W gave him the most trouble. His wife Hester would come down in her wrapper and watch, saying nothing, because she had lost two brothers over a boundary fence and did not hold with fine words. On the third night she took the pen from him and wrote the last line herself, in her own plain hand, so the township would know it was made by two folk and not one.

The copy went up in the schoolhouse that spring. Nobody remarked on the last line, which leaned like a fence post in a wind, but the teacher kept the sheet folded inside her Bible for forty years. When she died, her niece found it with a blue ribbon and a red one tied round it, and a pencilled note in the margin that said only: keep coming back to the table.